The aggrieved no doubt found a sort
of support in the hereditary relations of clientship, which the
subject cities and provinces entered into with their conquerors and
other Romans brought into close contact with them. The Spanish
governors felt that no one could with impunity maltreat clients of
Cato; and the circumstance that the representatives of the three
nations conquered by Paullus--the Spaniards, Ligurians, and
Macedonians--would not forgo the privilege of carrying his bier to the
funeral pile, was the noblest dirge in honour of that noble man.

But
not only did this special protection give the Greeks opportunity to
display in Rome all their talent for abasing themselves in presence of
their masters, and to demoralize even those masters by their ready
servility--the decrees of the Syracusans in honour of Marcellus, after
he had destroyed and plundered their city and they had complained of
his conduct in these respects to the senate in vain, form one of the
most scandalous pages in the far from honourable annals of Syracuse
--but, in connection with the already dangerous family-politics, this
patronage on the part of great houses had also its politically
perilous side.